[thelist] RSS Readers with authentication?

[Jason Kottke]

>> Does anyone know of RSS readers (for Win/Mac/Linux) that support
>> password-protected feeds? This is for an extranet-type use, and it
>> seems like a reasonable feature to me :-) but so far nada found...

NetNewsWire supports password-protected feeds:

http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

You might also look through the results for this search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=rss+reader+http+authentication

> Why on earth would you want to restrict an RSS feed?
> What a weird idea. If the stuff is so precious use VPN.

The same reason you'd want to restrict access to an HTML file or any other
file available via HTTP.

> The whole point behind RSS is announcement. TypePad allows you to set
> up private blogs which are password protected, and may be what you
> are looking for.
>
> But to futz up a specification whose existance is about publication is a
> crazy idea.

RSS is served via HTTP. HTTP supports password authentication. The
specification is already "futzed up"...shouldn't Web browsers, even the
specialized ones (an RSS reader is just a specialized Web browser),
support the HTTP spec as much as they can?

-jason

http://www.kottke.org
"home of fine hypertext products"